Gaza students with overseas university offers, scholarships remain trapped
As a new term begins, students promised places abroad face impossible immigration rules.
Electricity was scarce and the bombs kept falling, but each evening, Mahmoud Aldaya left his family’s tent in a displacement camp in southern Gaza, in search of enough internet signal to submit his assignments.
Much of his university work was done remotely because Israel’s genocide had devastated Gaza’s higher education system. Despite the conditions, the 24-year-old finished at the top of his class at Gaza University.
With little prospect of continuing his education in Gaza, Aldaya looked abroad. He secured a scholarship at the University of Limerick in Ireland, which issued a letter supporting his application to leave the enclave.
“Behind every visa application there is a real person, a real person with a life, a family, a future,” she said.